


Building a Fire

by vmprsm



Series: Kylux Virus AU [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 7k just...spilled out of me, Burns, Feral Behavior, Gen, Kylo POV, Masturbation, Obsession, Prequel, and it just sort of happened, bar fight violence, i hope it holds up the rest of the au, i really told myself over and over not to write this but i found the right song, rabies au, science!!, some more tags, something like abuse in the name of the greater good, the ship is pining only, unrealistic life success and skills, virus AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 07:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10986276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vmprsm/pseuds/vmprsm
Summary: A prequel to 'Introduced species'. The event's of Kylo's life up the to the events of the fic. Maybe this will answer some questions left open from I.s.





	Building a Fire

_All I wanted was to hear you,_

_all I wanted was to hear you speak,_

_and all I needed was to need you,_

_all I needed was you to need me_

 

“Look at me.”

 

Silence. The sound of clothes shuffling.

 

“Look at me!”

 

Kylo was grabbed by the collar and hauled into a sitting position, face-to-mask with a man broader than him. His eyes were still cast down. The man freed one hand from Kylo’s shirt, and slapped him. 

 

“You can’t keep on like this, boy. Your heart will give out first. Control it.”

 

Finally, as Kylo spit out a pinkish mix of saliva and blood, he said, “I can’t.”

 

“You  _ can.”  _ The man replied, and Kylo dragged his eyes up from the ground, passing over the mask and to the other people in the room, standing close to the opposite wall. And the door. By God he was so sick of closed doors. 

 

Their poses were a direct line to their feelings. Arms crossed, wary, or head tilted, pitying. People, Kylo could understand. They were often open books to his discerning eyes. But what he was? He couldn’t understand at all.

 

“You’ve been with us for six months. We expected progress.” Said one of the men in the back, with the crossed arms.

 

“Seems he’s only getting worse.” Said another, foot propped back against the wall.

 

“But he’s one of us now. Either he gets better, or he dies. But we can’t kick him out.” Said a third, the woman with the tilted head. 

 

“Obviously not.” Said the masked man, and if his face wasn’t covered Kylo knew he would feel breath on his face. How strangely intimate that would be. “Listen,” the man said, more quietly, “we don’t want you to die. We are hard on you because we must be. You have a gift, and you can’t squander it. Do you understand?”

 

Kylo didn’t, not really. He just wanted to be better. He nodded anyways.

 

The man let go of his shirt and helped him to stand up. “Alright. Get back in the chair, and we start again.”

 

-

 

Electrocution never really got less painful, you just learned how to ignore it for something more important. What that was, was up to you to decide. Still, Kylo swore angrily as he yanked his spasming hand back from the exposed wire, shaking it vigorously. A moment later he looked at his palm, where a burnt red line sat like fire across it, and cussed again. Wiring a light switch really shouldn’t have been so difficult. 

 

His ‘new’ apartment wasn’t really new at all, it was just stripped bare and had been left empty for months. There wasn’t really the funds to get a furnished, ready place, so Kylo made due with doing all the contract work himself. He was amazingly poor at it. 

 

Kylo looked around, finding the apartment white and empty and so very quiet for the middle of an afternoon in the city. Granted, he was on the tenth floor, but the soundproofing was still impressive.

 

This was the longest that Kylo had been alone in….well, ever. At twenty-five, he was finally deemed well enough to truly be on his own. 

 

“We’ll still be watching,” Shin had said, holding Ren by his shoulders. Now grown, Kylo was wider than him. “Though, if you need us, you know where we are. Do the Guard’s work.”

 

“Yes, Shin.” Kylo had said dutifully, and watched as the van drove away. He then walked back inside the lobby of his new apartment complex, climbed the ten flights of stairs, and locked the door behind him. He had leaned against the door, sighing, and did not move for a long time.

 

Now staring at the hole in the wall were the lightswitch would fasten in, he considered his options. He didn’t have anywhere else to go, unless he wanted to be homeless.  _ That  _ was a recipe for disaster. While his ability to control himself had gotten much better, he was still easily annoyed. Being physically uncomfortable was something of a pet peeve. Pet peeves could be deadly.

 

What he needed was a job. Something removed from people, obviously, but something he could make enough money with to leave. But he didn’t have papers. Birth certificate, driver’s license, social security card, nothing. He couldn’t get a job, not over the table. Besides, he had no idea how to even go about getting one. This apartment was paid for already, for a year.

 

One year to figure out how to become self-sufficient. To figure out who he wanted to be. 

The urge to put his finger in the socket again was pretty tempting, given his other options. 

 

-

 

“Alright, your stance is a little wide, but if you think that’ll give you better stability then we can work with it.”

 

“How would I know?”

 

Kylo smirked. “Well, easy test,” he said, then put his hands out and shoved the kid by the shoulders. The kid stumbled backwards, barely keeping his balance.

 

“So one, I shouldn’t be able to push you over so easily. The point of the forty-five is to make you less susceptible to lost balance from frontal attacks. Two, you should know that anyone giving you their hands is a gift. If someone touches you, make them pay for it.”

 

The kid laughed, a dark sound as he stood up straight. “Trust me, master, I intend to.”

 

Being called that never failed to send a chill down Kylo’s spine. It was an honor he never thought he would be allowed, and a reminder of things he never thought he would escape. Movement caught the corner of his eye and he swiveled, immediately defensive, before seeing it was only another couple boys looking around the corner into the abandoned warehouse. 

 

“You’re late,” he called out, “take a lap.”

 

“Aw c’mon man, really? We was five minute late. My ma wouldn’t stop askin’ questions.” One boy complained, stepping out from behind the wall. 

 

Kylo smiled. “Then leave earlier. We don’t take excuses. Your enemies won’t.”

 

The boys sighed, but broke into a jog around the outer edge of the warehouse. He looked back at the boy in front of him. “Do your stretches, I gotta use the restroom.”

 

He left the boys to their tasks, heading outside and finding a wall to do his business against. As he zipped up his jeans, he paused, thinking. These kids were the bottom of the totem pole. Runner boys for gangs, often abused by their parents, cared for very little by their schools who assumed they would fail. Kylo knew what that felt like, if a bit differently. Still, running drugs and doing errands paid them well, and they had decided to spend that money learning to fight, to protect themselves from a harsh world because no one else would try. 

 

Kylo had learned from Raven as a child, a mix of martial arts that, when blended together, made a dangerous cocktail of skills, but he had always preferred to let his feral side do the fighting. However, with his new ‘normal’ persona, he’d needed to keep it in. One of the boys had seen him fight off a couple of gangsters in an alley a few months ago, clear-headed, and it had all sort of snowballed from there. Word spread, and now Kylo was making a tidy thousand or so dollars every couple of weeks to teach boys, and a few girls, all across the ghetto neighborhoods, and he was gaining more students by the week. It was all under the table, so he didn’t need to care about taxes, and he made alright taxable income reselling stuff on eBay, enough to keep the police from looking too closely at his fabricated identity.

 

He was putting it all away, using just enough to feed and clean himself. His clothes were getting a bit tattered, but he assured himself it would all pay off. Another eight months, and he’d be to the wind, living free.

 

-

 

To be completely honest, the first time Kylo saw the man on tv, he was more arrested by his looks than the content of his presentation. 

 

It was a movie-classic moment. There was a storefront he was passing as he was walking across town (buses cost money, and what else did he need to be doing?), some sort of electronics store with all glass windows and the very obvious roll down metal doors at the top. Every tv faced outwards, and the flash of orange caught him. He stopped, turned his attention fully to the screens, and saw a truly beautiful man. The man’s eyes were lit up gorgeously in the stage lights, also illuminating the very light smattering of freckles across his nose. He was talking animatedly, with his hands and mouth, and the camera was zoomed in close, and as Kylo watched it backed out to show a panel of people, all smartly dressed and being questioned by an anchor. As it zoomed in again, when the man replied to someone else on the panel, a name arose in the foreground. 

 

_ Dr. Braeden Hux, virologist _

 

The word was like a slap in the face, or a bucket of ice water down his back. Kylo blinked, suddenly a bit anxious. He looked around, as if someone would just  _ know _ . No one was looking his direction. He kept walking. 

 

-

 

All in all, Kylo managed to keep his gift fairly well contained, for all it wanted to be free. 

 

There wasn’t a saferoom at his apartment. There wasn’t a safe space in all of Massachusetts. At least, not one that Kylo was aware of, even the Guard central base was in New York, hours and miles away. For a boy that had once had an episode every month or less, to hold back the feral part of him for the past year was something important. It had never been this long before, and sometimes it felt like Kylo could feel it itching under his skin, pumping through his veins, waiting for the right moment.

 

He furious-proofed his bathroom in his last month in Boston, if such a thing existed, and let it all go for a bit. When he came to, the entire room was in tatters. He’d even managed to pull the faucets out of the porcelain. It didn’t matter much to him, he’d be gone soon.

 

He didn’t feel any better.

 

-

 

Travel was hard on the constitution, but it did mean that Kylo could be more invisible than ever before.

 

He had saved up quite a lot of money, and was expanding his little online business into something really good to keep the money rolling in. He set up an unlinked side account under another name to funnel it all into, so he could keep a low profile. What had been flipping garbage on eBay turned into a quick reselling of high-profile items like cellphones and jewelry, using middlemen store owners to actually move the products and keeping a weighty cut as he sniped items for their stores. He still had access to the Guard bank account, he always would, but if he used it then they would know where he had gone. He set up firewalls and redirects and dummy accounts, just like E had taught him, and even his chosen name, his  _ true _ name, stayed a ghost.

 

Kylo traveled the northeast for two years, getting as far down the coast as the edge of South Carolina before turning back. He gathered a series of contacts and favors through his business, and kept his gift inside. He  _ wanted _ to use it, god yes. For things as monumental as ending the injustice he saw in the news, and as petty as ripping apart the woman who took too long making his coffee. Even in sleep, he dreamed of blood between his teeth and the screams of dying men. If he woke up hard, that wasn’t anyone’s business, and the release was the closest thing to the true self as he could get. The world wasn’t ready for the afflicted. Kylo wished desperately that he would see that day. 

 

-

 

“What the--”

 

The man’s words were cut off as all the air left his chest, whooshing out as Kylo’s weight dropped on top of him from a full body tackle. There was a crack of ribs and Kylo laughed as the man yelled in pain. He yanked the man’s arms down, pressing his knees hard into the wrists to lock them at his sides, and grabbed the man by the face with both hands. 

 

“You should have known better.”

 

“Known what?” The man spat angrily. He was struggling, but Kylo’s was all muscle were this man was all flab.

 

“Than to cheat my customers. I’m losing money and it’s your fault.” 

 

Kylo had noticed a few weeks prior, when he had suddenly been alerted to complaints on one of his sellers’ page. Items arriving broken, missing parts, or just not showing up at all. Worse than that, when Kylo did some digging, he found that the seller was  _ price gouging _ , therefore violating the contract of a price percentage between him and Kylo. He couldn’t have it. The online stores were the only thing that kept him free. He would not see one man being an idiot spell the end of his new life. He wouldn’t go back, to any of it. 

 

_ “You’re  _ ‘SoloSurvivor’?” The man asked, incredulous and pained. “How did you find me?”

 

Kylo sat back a little, and the man (Cthebest69, not really a great username) winced as more weight went onto his arms. “Oh you would be surprised what I can find. Your bank accounts, your five girlfriends, your shitty stash of ameteur porn.”

 

“Fuck you d--”

 

Kylo clamped a strong hand around his throat. Thankfully, they hadn’t gotten far into the man's appalling apartment, and the door had closed behind them. Kylo’s blood was singing, his head clouding with adrenaline, and he wanted nothing more than to let loose and tear this man to pieces he could then scatter all around the apartment. But that wouldn’t be smart. There were less than one hundred known cases of Malind in the United States. Over seventy percent of those were under surveillance or in custody. While the police might not immediately connect the dots, the smarter people watching would. Kylo couldn’t go running around as he pleased. He bit his tongue, hard, and the pain centered him. His heart rate slowed. 

 

“Let me tell you something,” Kylo said, leaning in again, “I have you dead to rights, right now, and it would make me a very happy monster to use that right.” He knew his eyes were currently very big, and very black, and the man tried to shrink away from his huge gaze. He grinned. “But I think we can do better. No more stealing. No more cheating. You want to swindle someone else? Sure. Send me a formal notice that you want to quit your contract. But otherwise, if you stay with me and I catch you again, I  _ will _ kill you.”

 

His voice had deepened, roughened with excitement and Kylo was pretty sure that’s what made the man piss himself. Kylo cringed inwardly, lifting up higher onto his knees to avoid it. “Are we clear?”

 

The man nodded.

 

“Say it.”

 

“We’re clear.” He croaked from around the vice grip on his windpipe. 

 

“Stay down. I’ll see myself out.”

 

-

 

Kylo went back to Boston, in the end. Really, nowhere else seemed to fit him, and he was tired of living out of a suitcase. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine living somewhere that wasn’t the east coast. It was the place that birthed him and gave him his gift. He found a moderately inexpensive apartment in the lower-middle class end of town, and made himself enough of a shut-in that his neighbors left him alone. He toyed with the idea of going to school, or maybe joining a dojo, doing anything other than going to the gym, walking around town, or being on the internet. Nothing seemed to stick, all the possibilities slipped out of his mind with no real plan in place. He wanted freedom, but was this it? 

 

The lessons of the Guard stood strong within him. There was more.  _ They _ were more. He had a purpose and he would find it.

 

-

 

It took two more months and a worrying amount of miles walked before it hit him.

 

It seemed that televisions were a source of inspiration for Kylo, as he had decided to sit in a small coffee shop, nursing an overpriced cup, and the tv in the corner behind the counter captured his attention. 

 

It was a documentary on Malind. A recent one, too, if the case count was anything to go by. Kylo watched, enraptured, as it went over the virus, cut with images of African forests and villages juxtaposed with scenes of the US northeast cities. It was nearly an out-of-body experience. He wasn’t just Kylo Ren, afflicted, twenty-five and alone. As he watched he was Ben Organa-Solo again, scared and awed by the terrifying power of a phenomenon he didn’t understand. The documentary looked at Malind as a clinical mystery. Kylo had put all memory of hospitals and tests out of his mind for years, and had just  _ been _ . Most days, himself and the virus were indistinguishable. He wouldn’t be himself without it. 

 

Is this what they really thought of it?

 

While Kylo did not follow every tenet and take all words as scripture from the Ren Guard, their descriptions made much more sense to him. Still, the bare-bones explanations of the science behind the furious episodes, that he could reconcile with the rest that he knew. 

 

He got up from the table, pushing his cup back towards to bar, half empty. 

 

Pacing his way to his apartment, hood pulled up over his hair as cool rain began to mist down, Kylo considered: couldn’t both be right? The scientific and the mystic. Maybe that would help other people understand, it would bring it out into the light. Science, medicine, alone they only made people hurt. It had not done Kylo any favors. But similarly, only the spiritual was an emotional strain, a pull towards something he couldn’t have. There was no true freedom for the afflicted. Like organized religion, there would always be those who were scared, who wouldn’t understand and would rail against them. It had to be something in between, to normalize Malind while also preserve its superiority. A balance.

 

The thought was enough to stop Kylo on the sidewalk. The rain slowly soaked through his jacket, the same one he’d had since he was eighteen, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he’d be doing laundry tonight. He didn’t let it overshadow his epiphany. 

 

This was his purpose. He’d make the world see what Malind  _ was,  _ in its entirety. 

 

-

 

“Fucking  _ again?” _

 

Kylo slammed shut the lid of his laptop. Another scientific article, locked behind a login and a one-year subscription. Research was an arduous enough process, but Kylo had already spent several hundred dollars in the last couple months getting access to the knowledge at all. It was infuriating. 

 

There were very few people researching Malind, and they were, thankfully, apparently all English speakers. It didn’t really help much however because half the articles were scientific jargon and graphs he didn’t understand, even with the legends at the bottom. Other than the documentary he had the day in the coffee shop (now downloaded), there were barely any layman’s resources to learn about the virus. His knowledge from childhood was patchy at best, a memory riddled with panic coupled with the general lack of understanding by medical professionals fifteen years ago. No one was going to explain what virions were to an eleven year old when he was regularly trying to tear their throats out. 

 

So he’d gone and bought a medical dictionary, and that had helped some, but Kylo still felt no closer to connecting the metaphorical bridge. He wasn’t  _ stupid _ , but he didn’t even have a regular high school diploma. He had gotten his GED on Prusilla’s insistence, but hadn’t stepped foot into an institution for formal learning since elementary. It felt like there was absolutely no way he was going to make heads or tails of any of this. 

 

He whipped back and forth in the kitchen, five wide steps away from the dining table and back again. There had to be a way. Something had to give. Kylo believed that this was meant for him, and he had to keep going. Really, there was no other choice. Either you lived, or you were dead. No choice. 

 

Growling, Kylo tore his shirt off over his head, and dropped his jeans to the ground, kicking them off his feet. His frustration was making him warm. He slapped on the air conditioning, and flopped back into the dining chair, opening the laptop again. Maybe...maybe he was looking in the wrong place. 

 

He popped open the laptop again, opened a new tab, and hoped the magic of Google would put him in the right place. 

 

-

 

Desire. Just another word for lust. Lust, fear, and rage were the only real emotions. Kylo knew that, but somehow desire just sounded more right. 

 

The amazing part was how he had missed it the first time. 

 

His laptop was set on a little table next to his tub, as he lounged in the cool water. He’d found that cold water was good for when he overheated himself, he’d been feeling on the brink of an episode all week since he’d somehow managed to catch some sort of sinus infection. 

 

Kylo sniffled. He really hoped it wasn’t the flu, because he could  _ not _ go to a clinic. He’d stocked up on sinus medication just in case, but he needed to be careful with medicines like Benadryl and painkillers, if he lost too much control of his faculties to drugs he would trigger anyways. 

 

So the bath helped. Kylo had propped his too-long legs up on the far end of the tub near the faucet, and his toes curled as he watched the man on the screen.

 

How had he missed this?

 

Dr. Braeden Hux, virologist, wasn’t just any virologist. He studied Malind and related rabies viruses. Often, he seemed to be a third or even fourth name on the papers Kylo had found, so it never clicked that the redhead was related. The magic of Google had saved him after all, with some free .org websites where Dr. Hux had set up informational videos and links to his publications (for free!  _ Free! _ ) 

 

The videos were simple, high school level, or so it seemed to him. The discussions in the papers he’d found before, or at least the abstracts, starting making a bit of sense. This man had been everything Kylo was looking for and never once put down people who were afflicted. The scientist always looked at it from a removed perspective, without judgement, just facts. Not exactly perfect but Kylo would prefer emotionless over negative.

 

It helped that Dr. Hux was stunningly attractive. Piercing eyes, high cheekbones, a regal bearing and crisp speech pattern, Dr. Hux oozed authority and demanded your attention. Kylo watched as the video switched from a cartoonish animation of the inside of a cell to the scientist. He was addressing an auditorium, stepped out from behind a podium. It appeared some of his videos were recorded as he taught a university course. 

 

_ “The important part to remember here is the difference between an acute and a chronic disease. Acute disease are as such because they don’t try to assimilate into the host, or they simply can’t. They destroy. Burst cells, block nervous responses, force the body into an immediate and violent reaction in an effort to neutralize the intruder. Chronic diseases either hide, overwhelm, or assimilate. All of these methods can create a low enough impact on the body that it only responds when necessary, and the virus lives on to reproduce some other way.” _

 

That made sense, he supposed, and he would consider it in terms of Malind later, but for now he was watching Dr. Hux’s mouth move. His lips were unfair. 

 

Desire. What a fancy word for such a base need. 

 

Kylo didn’t get out too much, but he wasn’t a eunuch. He was extremely careful when he did pick up someone, gender didn’t really matter he’d decided, and he always had a very serious demand before any activity. Protection was paramount. The gift would decide whether it wanted to pass on at that point, but he wouldn’t instigate it. He didn’t want that responsibility. Choosing someone for Malind like the Guard sometimes did was a lengthy process and he didn’t think he was qualified. Besides, if people didn’t understand it and there were suddenly more afflicted? It would easily turn into a witch hunt. 

 

Either way, his partners were usually the type who slept around, so nothing would come back to him anyways. Kylo never saw the same person twice.  

 

Some days he wondered if he was being irresponsible. It was easy to put the thought down. Society, normal people, all of that had never done him any favor, had never considered him anything but a problem. He owed it all nothing. 

 

Christ, Dr. Hux was built like a pine tree, towering and thin but solid. Kylo could see his chest very slightly straining the buttons on his dress shirt. Dr. Hux clearly needed to update his wardrobe but Kylo would pay money to take the man’s shirt off himself. 

 

His hand slipped under the water and Kylo felt it like a perspective shift. With the gentle movement of the water, he could pretend it wasn’t his own. It was like his submerged body was removed from the rest and it felt  _ so good _ . He stroked himself gently, teasingly, imagining another body in the tub with him, desire in their eyes, wanting nothing more than to please him. 

 

Not many people had ever chosen to spend time with him, not after he’d been diagnosed. They were either scared, or uncomfortable, or plainly didn’t care. It was hard not to think about it sometimes, especially when he was alone. Granted, that was almost all the time.

 

In the privacy of his bathroom, Kylo let out an aborted little sob as he came, a couple of tears dropping out of his scrunched shut eyes and falling into the bathwater. He took a huge breath, held it, and let his exhale propel him out of the bath. Water flicked onto the screen, slightly blurring Dr. Hux’s face.

 

He knew that love was just dependency based on lust. He knew that. But it didn’t stop him from wanting to know what it felt like. For someone to feel that way about him. 

-

 

It was entirely possible that, while Kylo hadn’t been paying attention, his research had turned into a bit of an obsession.

 

He’d basically stopped going outside altogether. His business was booming and so automated that at this point he barely had to do anything at all other than monitor and tweak every couple days. 

 

His kitchen wall, the one that separated the room from the living room, had become a menagerie of papers. He’d tacked up, with no forethought to the drywall, clippings from newspapers, bits of scientific journals, online print-outs, anything he could get his hands on. 

 

Every page was related to Braeden Hux. 

 

Kylo’s mind was always whirling with questions. Did Hux have a personal stake in Malind? Like a daughter or a cousin who’d gotten it? If it was entirely academic, where had he gotten his inspiration? Did Hux believe in freedom for afflicted? Did he believe in a  _ cure _ ?

 

That last one was a scary thought, and Kylo always cut his mind off before he could go further. Malind didn’t need to be cured, just understood. 

 

Even with all the what-ifs, and the pining gazes Kylo shot to his accidental shrine, it couldn’t be denied that Braeden Hux was very intelligent and very invested. Kylo really needed someone in his corner, even if they didn’t know it. Dr. Hux’s educational work and his research were invaluable. 

 

Kylo had found out his touring schedule from a ‘friend’ who was a student at Boston University, and had a copy of the flyer in the center of his mess of wall papers. As he sat in front of his laptop on the kitchen table (now strewn with books, journal articles, sticky notes, and pads with his scribbling handwriting), he looked over to the flyer again. 

 

_ Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) Grand Auditorium- 12/04, 7pm. Dr. Braeden Hux, ‘Integration: virus assimilation into the human genome.’ _

 

He’d get to see the man in the flesh. Hear his voice without the barrier of a recording, the imperfection of a speaker. He’d already illegally downloaded every lecture from every university tour he could get his hands on, but it wasn’t the same. Kylo had to experience Braeden Hux with his own senses. He had to know the man who was changing his life was real. 

 

The walk to the university was about an hour, so Kylo set out early, after a long cool shower and blow drying his hair. Five pm might have seemed too early, but he could always stop and get some food on the way at whatever quick place caught his eye. He hesitated over his hoodie, but decided to leave it behind. He needed to be something a little better than himself tonight, and his hoodie was how he managed the world most days, he could always pull it up over his hair and hide his face whenever he felt vulnerable, and the comfort of the encompassing feeling of it was a crutch. Sometimes it felt like the only thing that kept him for bursting out of his skin. 

 

So Kylo put on a dress shirt, a thin tie, and his nicest boots under black jeans and left his hoodie at home. 

 

The weather was nice, and the chicken wrap he got was pretty damn good, but in his over-eagerness he still arrived to the auditorium nearly an hour early. It turned out to be a good thing, as he faced a line that wrapped halfway around the building. He scoffed, irritated, and then walked down the line. There were more normal looking people that he expected, looking kind of like him, with clothes that weren’t fancy but nice enough. A few looked around uncomfortably, with a familiarity that Kylo couldn’t pinpoint the source of. 

 

At the end of the line, Kylo leaned against the outer wall of the building and waited. 

 

-

 

Raven had always taught him to be aware of his surroundings. It could mean his life, he said. 

 

Of course, the only time it really mattered was when Kylo wasn’t.

 

The lecture had been wonderful, enlightening, positively  _ charged _ . Everyone had paid keen attention to Dr. Hux; Kylo hadn’t taken his eyes off the other man for more than a few seconds. The point of the lecture lended credence to what Kylo’s had started to believe: the virus was a part of the host, and a symbiosis was created when Malind chose a host. Dr. Hux hadn’t said it in those exact words, but his overviews of things like retroviruses and HIV said it loud and clear that viruses were a part of humans. He’d even said that almost ten percent of the human genome was made up from old virus insertions! 

 

He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts, making connections with his studies and thinking of what to explore next, he didn’t notice the motorcycle right in front of him until he crashed into it. 

 

The sound was appalling, and the few people outside the bar the bike had been parked in front of cringed. Kylo managed to keep his balance, barely, but had to scramble away from the heat coming off the bike. It must have just been turned off.

 

Kylo mumbled a curse to no one in particular that Lena would have tweaked his ear for and leaned down to pick the motorcycle back up.

 

“What the fuck!”

 

A big man, nearly one and a half Kylo’s size, lumbered out of the bar. The man looked straight out of Sons of Anarchy, with tattoos down his arms and a stretched leather vest over his dark shirt. Kylo looked up. 

 

“I’m--” He’d been about to say  _ sorry _ , and explain that he’d pay to get it fixed or cleaned up, but the man cut him off.

 

“You think you’re gonna steal my bike, you son of a bitch?” The biker spat.

 

Kylo blinked. “No, I--”

 

The man marched forward and shoved Kylo by the shoulders. The bike crashed back to the ground as he let go of the handlebars, and Kylo himself stumbled backwards. 

 

Still advancing, the man cracked his knuckles. How cliche, Kylo thought briefly, before the knuckles came for his face.

 

He dodged deftly, seeing the haymaker from a mile away, and jumped to the side of the man. Already, he could feel his heart beating in his chest. Bad situation. He needed to diffuse it, or end it. “Look, I didn’t mean it hit it. I’ll pay for it.”

 

“Oh, you’ll pay for it.” The biker growled, and swung for Kylo again. 

 

He ducked away, but didn’t expect the kick to his stomach that followed it up. How did the man get his leg that high in those pants? Kylo thought as the chicken wrap threatened to make a reappearance. He stepped back again and straightened back up, trying to put his guard up, but the man immediately came in with another punch. This one landed, striking Kylo across the cheek and a line of agonizing pain opened up across his cheekbone as the ring on the man’s hand split the skin.

 

Kylo went with the blow as he’d been taught, jerking to the right and letting the momentum throw him towards the bar again. He rolled, barely coming up on his feet and managing to get into a good stance. He raised his fists. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He said, and tried to hold his breath. 

 

The man laughed. “I’m gonna fuck you up pretty boy.”

 

He could feel the blood on his face, starting to drip down off his jaw and slide down his neck. On impulse he stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth and licked it from the corner. Shit, that was it. He’d missed it. 

 

“You get one last chance. Let me leave.” If he tried to run, the bike would just chase him down on his motorcycle. Kylo knew the city fairly well, but he couldn't outrun a Harley. 

 

“You’ll leave in an ambulance,” the man threatened, and charged.

 

Dodge, block, duck, counter, block. Kylo let his body do the work, only focusing enough to let his mind recognize where the next threat was coming from. He needed to take a lot more abuse before he triggered. He could keep it together. He had to. 

 

Surprisingly, or maybe not depending on your perspective, he was getting a few good hits in. But the man took them like a sponge, and kept coming. He must be on something, Kylo thought, to be so vicious and determined. The slowly inched closer to the bike, and Kylo thought maybe if he could jump over it, he could buy enough time to dart into the bar and force the bartender to call for the police. The people outside the bar earlier had scattered. 

 

His worry, his attempt at control, his planning, it was all too much to juggle. Something had to drop. Unfortunately, it was his guard. A jab to the chest had him gasping, and the man took his opportunity to grab Kylo by his shirt and haul him over to the bike. He threw Kylo down over it, likely hoping to do some damage with the awkward shape of the engine and piping, and Kylo didn’t notice that much at all. Immediately the burning reached his brain, and he screamed with pain and rage as the hot pipes scorched his back. 

 

_ Don’t worry,  _ something said in his brain,  _ I’ve got you. _

 

He threw the other man off of him with two feet on his torso, and rolled off the bike to collapse on the asphalt, the rough ground ripping at his ribcage as he slid along it. His body jerked violently, he felt something like unconsciousness creep up on him. His thoughts dimmed in a feeling so familiar it was like remembering a repeated dream. It was like nostalgia. The virus was taking over and Kylo did not try to stop it. 

 

He knew he would remember the details later, but for now Kylo was no longer a man, and monsters had no use for details. The man crumpled under his terrifying strength, his screams were a symphony and Kylo sang along in snarls and growls. His hands and teeth clenched hard onto anything they could. 

 

It was impossible to tell how much time had passed, but he was in so much pain and so far gone that he didn’t even feel the needle pierce his thigh. He did, however, see the men approach him from the front, and crouched protectively over the remain of the biker. That distraction allowed the men _ behind  _ him, all four of them, to grab his arms and put them in binders. He struggled like an animal going to slaughter, roaring and thrashing, but the drugs were already slowing him down. The same four men held him in place and put a muzzle over his mouth, then picked him up and carried him like a hammock toward a large carrier truck, similar to the kind used to transport inmates. By the time they secured him to the wall inside, he wasn’t fighting much anymore. He sat on his legs with his butt propped up on his heels, his back towards the frigid air conditioning blasting from the front of the truck, and heaving in lungfuls of air. 

 

The truck rolled out of the street as the sirens of ambulances and cop cars got within earshot, but the Malind response team had always been faster, as far as Kylo had ever known. He closed his eyes, content to let the drugs knock him out.

 

That was, until the truck stopped again, and soon after the doors opened. Kylo immediately looked up, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, but couldn’t see well in the darkness with his vision swimming. He caught a flash of warm color, and knew more than saw that someone was being locked to the opposite wall. He heard snapping teeth and angry short vocalizations and knew it was another afflicted. What a coincidence, Kylo thought, trying to see the other person still but the drugs finally hit their peak and he slumped to the floor, unconscious. 

 

-

 

All that work, gone with one episode. They  _ knew.  _ The healthcare system knew he was once Ben, so that meant the government knew, which meant the Guard knew where he was, which also meant his parents knew. What a fucking nightmare. 

 

The revelation of Dr. Hux’s affliction had not yet hit him, his mind still a little vague from some truly excruciating pain and the overwhelming need to disappear, immediately. 

 

After the slip of tongue that was saying the equivalent of ‘Nice tits’ to the source of his obsession, he checked himself out. By that, he meant he snuck out. Kylo had long ago learned how to escape from confinement (thank you, Zita). He was no Houdini but he could at least get out of leather straps. He stole a lab coat from a laundry bin and tried to act natural as he strode out of a side door of the hospital, all the while trying not to give in to the pain that threatened to lay him out. 

 

From there it was a cab that he had to ditch when he realized he had no money, and a brutal half hour’s walk back to his apartment. By the time he got there, he took the key from inside a planter and collapsed face-first onto the couch without any further thought to tending to his injuries. 

 

That was a mistake, he learned twelve hours later, as his bandages stuck horribly to the pussing burns on his back and the road rash on his side. His face had already been stitched up, thank god, but he still had needed to pour rubbing alcohol directly onto it, bite hard into his belt, and hope the redness around it wasn’t infection.

 

He’d had a stash of medications for exactly this scenario, and he downed a very illegal painkiller and a broad-spectrum antibiotic after cleaning up what he could of his wounds and before falling back asleep, this time in bed. Kylo wasn’t worried about being found. The apartment was rented under an alias, and his bills were all addressed the same. Kylo Ren was a ghost and Ben Organa-Solo was dead. 

 

In the end, he’d needed to call a favor. Some of the boys he’d taught a couple years prior, now wiser and fending for themselves, agreed to meet him in a safe place every day to help him heal. They were rougher looking now, but still just as spunky, and they still seemed grateful for his attention. With their assistance, he avoided infection and healed relatively quickly. His back would need time and a good stretching regimen to regain acceptable mobility in the tissues, but he didn’t seem to need a graft, as the shirt had stopped the metal from making direct contact with his skin. 

 

Kylo laid low for a couple months, then packed up and sublet his apartment. Boston wasn’t safe for him anymore. The police would have an APB out for him, and while they certainly didn’t have a recent photo it was still risky. His mother was very talented at using resources to get what she wanted, and he was sure that only the protection of the Guard had kept him from her when he was a boy. Protection that he no longer wanted or had. Secondarily, if the Guard looked hard enough for him in Boston, they would find him, no doubt. 

 

So he left. He didn’t go too far, but a few hours out of town was enough to find a small place in a more rural forested area where Kylo settled in again. It was isolating, sure, but it left him with plenty of time to think.

 

Now unburdened, his thoughts turned to the more important discoveries from recent events. Namely: Dr. Hux. 

 

This thoughts started as awe, excitement, absolute pleasure as the words rolled over and over in his mind.  _ Braeden Hux was afflicted. Braeden Hux had Malind. Braeden Hux was just like him.  _

 

But inevitably, he was not satisfied with that. He turned back to his laptop, searching for Dr. Hux again, but this time in the context of discovering personal information about the brilliant man. Again and again, even using every trick in his book, he couldn’t find anything that pointed to Hux being afflicted. No news outlet article, no health department release or list, no police report. Nothing. Hux was, very effectively, hiding his condition. 

 

Why?

 

Dr. Hux had everything. Prestige, respect, intelligence, control. Why was he pretending to be normal? He was in a perfect position to make a statement, to be...exactly what Kylo needed. But he didn’t. He pretended to be  _ just like the rest of them.  _ Kylo couldn’t understand it, and the more he thought about it, the more it made him angry. 

 

Without really thinking about it, which was always when he made his worst choices, six months after breaking out of the hospital, Kylo got in a cab and returned to Boston. Maybe Hux didn’t understand how important this was, but Kylo did. Kylo would make him understand.  

 

_ Too much time could never be spent,  _

_ we wasted days on words that I believed you meant  _

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in a fugue state and was posted unbeta'd, so if there are mistakes let me know.  
> You can find me at vmprsm.tumblr.com  
> The lyrics at the beginning and end, along with the title, are from 'Do It Over' by Heirsound.


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